Cancer is the largest family of diseases that involve abnormal uncontrolled cell growth which metastasizes to other parts of the body. The most common type of cancers includes lung, liver, colorectal, prostate, stomach, breast and cervical cancer with skin cancer excluding melanoma (contribute up to 40% of the cases). The conventional treatment approaches like surgery, chemotherapy, etc., have several side effects such as severe inflammation and pain. Hence, pharmacotherapeutic approaches of antineoplastic agents can be advantageous for treating various forms of cancer through the skin. Novel transdermal techniques and preparations have been emerged to overcome the limitations of skin and to penetrate inside the cancerous cells by transporting through the deeper tissues of the skin. The transdermal penetration of drugs using different formulations such as nanocarriers, physical penetration enhancement techniques, chemical penetration enhancers and newer technologies such as gels, dendrimers, needle-free injection jet etc., show improved patient compliance, abolition of scars and economic value. The topical delivery of antineoplastic agents is an attractive choice for increasing site-specific delivery, reducing side effects and improving therapeutic effects. The objective of this review is to present insights into pharmacotherapeutic techniques, which can be used for transdermal delivery of anticancer agents through skin due to its potential to create a new frontier in treatment of cancer.
A point-of-care, non-invasive, low-cost and sensitive nano-biodiagnostic is needed in today’s age for rapid and accurate self-diagnosis as well as for the management of asthma, which is advantageous for low resource areas where asthma is prevalent. The objective of this research work was to prepare the miniature, nanosponges coated paper strip to detect the asthma using certain biomarkers present in exhaled air. The asthma biomarker, nitric oxide present in exhaled air (FeNO) was chosen, which on reaction with nanosponges of diazotizing agent gave significant color change. The pyromellitic anhydride cross-linked β-cyclodextrin-based nanosponges of sulfanilamide and N-(1-naphthyl) ethylenediamine dihydrochloride were prepared using a polymer condensation method and coated on Whatman filter paper strip (1 × 5 cm2). The thickness of coating was found to be uniform (400 ± 50 μm) which was determined using SEM analysis. The Hue-Saturation-Value scale was used to detect the color change using a smartphone app. We also investigated the performance of a nano-engineered paper strip by comparing this with commercially available, FDA approved FeNO analyzer-NIOX MINO. Our findings demonstrated no significant difference in results obtained using both the techniques. Besides good repeatability, the paper strip showed increasing saturation with NO concentration and the capacity to detect the biomarker down to mean value of 20.33 ppb level. The successful validation and method comparison indicated that a bioinspired strip can provide on-site analysis and daily monitoring for diagnosis and management of asthma.
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